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Hololens Commercial Suite

microsoft.com

113 pointsrunesoerensen23 comments

For those of you with one already, are you using it daily? And if so, how are are you using it?

I noticed in the FAQ that Microsoft itself seems to be letting users fill in the blanks[1]:

> Why would I want holograms in my real world? >We’ve made incredible advances as an industry in the ways we interact with computers. However, we are still constrained because we must conform to the ways computers recognize our commands through a keyboard or by touching a screen. Using holograms, you can place your digital content, such as apps, information, and even multi-dimensional videos, in the physical space around you, so you can interact with it in the same ways that you interact with physical objects.

>Who will benefit most from Microsoft HoloLens? >This is just the beginning. While our current focus is growing the ecosystem through the efforts of pioneering developers and commercial partners, we are also committed to releasing HoloLens to consumers in the next few years.

To me, those FAQ answers say that Microsoft doesn't have a clear use case and instead just wants to make sure they have a platform in case Holo-computing does take off. I openly admit this is my interpretation, but I'm just wondering why this is touted as a business tool without too many suggestions or offerings from MS on what you're actually supposed to use it for or how it benefits.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us/faq

I set up a Hololens (developer edition) this week and I think most of these features are already in there... I joined it to Azure AD, setup a PIN login, and saw settings to enroll it in to device management (that I did not test). Did not see kiosk mode but this has historically been a standard Windows feature. Did not see bitlocker settings, maybe this is really new...

Kiosk Mode appears to be part of the Commercial Suite [1]

1. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/holographic/us...

Indeed, I do not see that menu item.

> Contact your Microsoft account representative or email mpcsales@microsoft.com.

If you have to ask...

Unrelated question:

> Work access. Anyone in your organization can remotely connect to the corporate network through a virtual private network on a HoloLens. HoloLens can also access Wi-Fi networks that require credentials.

Does this imply that the standard devkit can't access RADIUS'd Wi-Fi?

I have definitely connected my devkit to a WPA2 Enterprise network before. Works as you would expect. Not entirely sure why they're implying that.

Why do you think that those statement imply that? It is clearly saying that the option to VPN in and connect to WiFi with credentials are supported, not that those are the only ways. At least, that is how I read it.

> If you have to ask...

FWIW, the Development Edition alone, without the enterprise additions, costs 3k$.

For those of you asking if it comes with good demo applications: The answer is yes.

I played two games on a development edition back in June, these really really emphasised the power of the hardware, its spatial awareness and just the immersion of your whole environment.

Galaxy Raider (I think it was called) And another where you helped a furry animal collect coins around your house or area you were in.

I tried Youtube, works great on your wall. Field of view is an interesting topic I'm sure people will mention.

I did feel a bit ill after an hour but my friends haven't had issues. I think it was the caffeine intake.

I was saying it was stupid going through a sales associate but you can still buy a developer edition for 3000.

Going through a sales associate is a signal to certain sorts of big enterprises that this product is "ready to deploy" in a serious enterprise fashion.

As with many new technologies, we currently have multiple incompatible proprietary implementations of VR, each with it's own dev tool chains. This is a market in it's very early infancy.

I've not really tracked this closely so I'm curious. Are there any efforts towards standardisation, if not in hardware then in software? Are any of the current hardware standards open in any way? To what extent can existing standards such as OpenGL be leveraged for this tech?

I see from the HoloLens FAQ that they mention Unity. Can Unity be used to develop Hololens, Oculus and others?

Unity does do both the Rift and the Vive, and is the offical, most supported way to get started on both platforms.

I also messed around quite a bit with Unreal Engine and my Rift dev unit. It's also compatible with Vive from what I understand. I enjoyed playing around with it because it was easy to go from my past tinkering in stuff like Cinema4D to making objects, textures, and lighting in UE, then hitting "play" and being able to walk around them in VR wearing the Rift headset.

Microsoft certainly seems interested in standardizing the platform for VR, especially with reference to AR/MR [mixed reality] where the devices need to interact with real world objects. That seems to be the stated goal of the "Windows Holographic" initiative and why they've been making such a big deal about it being included as a base platform in all Windows 10 devices with the next Windows 10 release (codename: Redstone 2).

See the announcements this week of Intel's Mixed Reality prototype Project Alloy, which takes a different approach from the HoloLens, and that Windows Holographic will support the Windows Holographic Shell that HoloLens uses also on pure VR headsets like Vive/Rift.

Unity does look like a good way to target all of the VR options today in a portable way, and hopefully Windows Holographic will help that targeting for those doing "raw DirectX" work.

I've not yet heard of similar efforts towards an "OpenVR" relative to OpenGL, but that sounds like a good idea.

I was able to hack together an ugly version of a hololens from a tracfone LCD and some VR lenses.

Anyone hacking this type of stuff together? I have some interesting concepts I have experimented with that include custom molded light pipe directly contacting the cornea and getting a relatively crisp picture. Hit me up, I love experimenting with optics and I might actually have a few novel concepts (but as a hobbyist, hard for me to tell if they have been done before)

Please, please make a tutorial and link it. I am highly interested in this. Especially the direct to cornea contact. Is it able to provide a complete vision override?

How hard is it to integrate the device in a non-Windows environment? I know a couple of warehouses that might be interesting in testing the device for navigation/parts identification etc. but one of them runs on BSD and the other on Linux. I'd have to integrate with their logistics software which runs on these machines etc.

I'm assuming that's a non-issue but asking just in case anyone has played with HL in depth.

The HoloLens runs a version of Windows 10 (it is its own computer, which partly accounts for its $3k cost right now). You'd write Windows 10 UWP apps for it and install them to the HoloLens. Those apps could communicate with the rest of your apps in whichever ways make sense. For instance, you could stand up simple REST services on the BSD/Linux machines and your UWP app could make HTTP(S) calls to get updated information from those machines over Warehouse WiFi.

Business hammocks!

Does it come with any useful applications? Or any good demos?

It would be good if the video worked on my Windows 10 Phone...

Works fine on my 950xl in Edge. The video is an embedded YouTube link.

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